Fenland District Council to lobby new Government to overturn £300 million incinerator plan

Opponents of a £300 million waste-to-energy incinerator in Wisbech are to appeal to the new Government to block the development.

Members of Fenland District Council have agreed to lobby ministers in the newly elected Labour Government to overturn the former Conservative administration’s approval for the waste-to-energy facility at Algores Way.

Campaigners say the MVV Environment-run incinerator, which is expected to be able to take about 625,000 tonnes a year of household and commercial waste, will not bring any benefits and is likely to mean hundreds of lorries a day on local roads.

Plans to build the incinerator were given the go ahead in February by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

A High Court judge has also refused an application from opponents to hold a judicial review into the approval decision.

But Fenland council leader, Councillor Chris Boden, told the local authority’s Full Council meeting: “The issue isn’t fully finished yet.

"We do have a new Government and we are able to take actions which could assist us.

"I’m quite confident that any proposal by Government ministers to overturn what has been decided about the Wisbech Incinerator would be resisted by civil servants, but we have already seen that civil servant advice isn’t always necessarily followed by ministers.

“So, what we will be doing this week is to write to Ed Miliband in his capacity as new Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, and a separate letter to Steve Reed, the new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in order to put our case to them that it would be in accordance with their own policies that they ran for election on to take a look at the Wisbech incinerator and see if it’s possible for them to overturn what has been decided.

He added: “We’re going to do that in an entirely non-political way, we’re not going to raise any party politics in it, because most important of all is to try, even at this 11th hour, to try to get that decision reversed and anything which can be done, must be done.

"Any chance we’ve got, we’ve got to do it.”